Network management products, such as Hewlett Packard's Network Node Manager (HP's NNM), can provide for performance management of a network by monitoring the performance of network hardware, software, and media, such as throughput rate, percentage utilization, error rates, and response time, through the collection and analysis of data about the network. Data collection can occur either by sending measurement requests to devices operating in the network from a central management station that collects and processes the information, or can occur on a distributed basis by having several collection stations (or agents), operating within the network, that send requests for information to the various devices in the network. As the number of application programs and users of a network increases, the number of requesters of information about devices operating within the network increases as well.
The task of collecting data on behalf of multiple requestors can result in duplicity in the requests for information that can occur over the entire network. As a result, the same information can be requested and gathered, repetitively, from the same target device for each requestor of the information. Unless an intelligent mechanism is put in place to consolidate and condense these data requests, a targeted device in the network can become overloaded with unnecessary requests for data. For certain types of target devices, this situation may not be of considerable consequence. But for other critical resources in a network, such as routers or switches, the extra burden placed on the devices from a multitude of data requests can prove harmful to the performance of the device, and ultimately to the entire network. In addition, a large number of duplicate requests for information can result in unnecessary data processing and storage requirements being placed on the measurement system.
Prior solutions have required a coordination of the measurement requests on the part of the measurement requesters to limit the number of requests sent to a particular device. But such direct coordination among different requesters can be difficult to achieve, and can require the creation of a complex, coordinated, and rigid measurement definition that is not easily adapted to changes that can occur in the measurement environment.